The episode that split Milan-Roma in two came in the 39th minute. Zeki Celik, riding the wave of an overflowing first half hour, tried a complicated dribble on the byline. Milan recovered the ball and with three passes, got it to Leao. We are at least 40 meters from the goal, but between him and the goal, there is only Ndicka, and the danger is therefore great.
By the way, if you like to track team form and player performance across different sports and competitions, the tactical clarity shown by Milan in this match offers insights that matter beyond Serie A. In fact, similar analytical thinking applies when assessing trends for DraftKings NFL bets. There, momentum and decision-making under pressure often define outcomes.
The value of certain players is actually measured by how far from the goal they can still be dangerous. We also talked about Milan-Roma in Che Partita Hai Visto, the podcast dedicated to our subscribers in which we comment hot on the most important matches of the week. If you are not yet subscribed, you can do so by clicking here. Leao runs along the left touchline and at a certain point seems to have his path closed; the second burst, however, is the different one. Leao manages to cut toward the box, with Ndicka suddenly having lost five meters. While he runs toward the byline, Strahinja Pavlovic, a central defender, runs into the box. Those who have seen Milan at the beginning of this season will not be surprised: Pavlovic is often a source of chaos in an otherwise overly orderly team; a player who seems to feed on forward runs into every corridor of the pitch. He often makes the wrong choice, but this contributes to making him unpredictable.
Leao crosses backward and Pavlovic scores Milan’s goal of advantage. At that moment, we did not know it would be the decisive goal, but we knew it would create the ideal context for Allegri’s team. Roma’s hyper-aggressive attitude in the first half hour had a cost. The improvement of the last few matches was also born from the exchange of positions between the central defenders: previously, Mancini played as the central apex, while recently, Gasperini has moved him to the right, where he maintains an aggressive attitude in marking and is very proactive offensively. On the occasion of the goal, Mancini is stationed in the penalty area waiting for a cross, and he does not perceive the danger when Roma loses the ball, failing to drop in coverage on Saelemaekers.
At that point, the Belgian can advance, attracting Manu Koné, who throughout the match had the task of flanking Ndicka in these Leao counterattacks. It is an action that synthesizes the two opposite philosophies. Until that moment, Roma recovered 15 balls close to Milan’s goal without creating particular dangers, while Milan, recovering one practically on its own goal line, managed to build the premises for the goal. It is a paradox justified by the simple presence of Rafael Leao, who knew how to seize the spaces conceded by Roma. It had become clear that that was the area of the field on which the match would probably be decided. Roma was creating much disorder in Milan precisely from that side. Koné dropped back, while Mancini pushed up to create classic wing combinations. Milan was often out of timing, Ricci was drawn by Mancini, Bartesaghi stepped up on Celik, and Soulè attacked depth or freed himself one-on-one with Pavlovic. After the match, Allegri said that Bartesaghi should have stayed lower and thus opened less space behind him. In this action, Roma seeks the combination to free Soulè a first time, gets the timing wrong, goes back, switches play, and then returns to the right, where it manages to trigger the Argentine.
That was also the area where Milan tried to come out most often, seeking Leao as soon as possible, but Roma did a great job of screening and ball recovery. This is the map of Gasperini’s team’s pressing and gegenpressing in the first 40 minutes of the match, with many balls recovered on the right flank. In that portion of the match, Roma shot 11 times toward Milan’s goal. Every three and a half minutes, Roma shot toward Maignan. In the 26th minute, Milan showed some cracks in Roma’s defensive system. Leao regained a ball at midfield and ran all the meters that again separated him from the goal alone. Leao earned the corner kick (he could do no more), but it was enough to make San Siro roar and slightly change the temperature of the match and undermine some of Roma’s certainties. The impression, in short, was that the match could split at any moment on that wing, depending on some detail. Would Roma find a way to crown that territorial dominance, or would Milan find the moment, the single moment, able to break that aggressiveness and take advantage of the consequent spaces?
The second possibility occured, and Leao's goal split the match in two:
Until the goal, Roma had held 60% of possession; from the 40th to the 60th minute, Milan managed to keep the ball more than Roma. They raised their line of engagement and began to imprint on the match their hypnotic rhythm of passing and possession. It has also been a recent limitation of Allegri’s team: focusing too much on control, lowering the pace too much, no longer creating chances, and then paying for some wrong defensive reading by their players. This time, Milan continued to push, taking advantage of Roma’s longer distances, finding several chances. There were also some moments of high pressure, as relayed via Ultimo Uomo.
On a mistaken horizontal pass by Wesley, at the end of the first half, Milan built another great chance, again with Leao drawing all the attention to himself and serving Bartesaghi, who crossed for Fofana, who missed the finish. From another moment of gegenpressing, at the beginning of the second half, Milan built a second chance for Fofana, who evidently is the wrong person to ask to score. Two minutes later, Milan again brought Leao close to shooting after a ball lost by Dybala. It is as if Roma were surprised by Milan’s sudden aggressiveness and could not recalibrate themselves to a different match, simultaneously frightened by Leao’s mere presence. Sometimes for Milan, it is truly enough to send a scrappy ball toward the Portuguese to make Roma’s defense run backward. In the 49th minute, Leao almost scored with a strong left-footed shot deflected by Mancini, on which Svilar performed a miracle; on the subsequent corner Milan hit the post.
Almost all of Milan’s xG came in this portion of the match. At the same time, however, Milan "settled defensively," as Allegri said. When Roma built positionally, Bartesaghi and Ricci came out with more caution, and in general, Milan began to manage spaces better and to alternate more consciously between phases of low defense and bursts of pressing. As time passed, Roma began again to play in Milan’s half, while Milan mostly limited themselves to defending, aware, however, of Gasperini’s team’s difficulties when it comes to scoring against closed defenses and when spaces are not there. The episode for Roma to equalize did come, but Fofana blocked with his arm a well-directed free kick by Pellegrini, and Dybala missed the fourth of the last five penalties taken by the Giallorossi. In the 67th minute, Leao missed an incredible goal, once again showing his contradictions. He was about to score with his weak foot with a 100 km/h shot, but he was not able to score from two meters in front of an almost empty goal. After all, he has been in Serie A for six years: we know him. Leao had been doubtful before the match due to an inflammation in his hip and did not seem in perfect condition, and certain of his technical flaws (especially in shooting on goal) remain the same as always. Yet, even in this framework, he remains a player capable of deciding an important Serie A match like the one versus Roma. Of course, the context was ideal for him. There are no teams in Serie A that concede spaces like Gasperini’s Roma, that trust so much in their players’ ability to win duels. The effectiveness of Gasperini’s strategy in Serie A has historically also been based on the flaws of Italian teams, which rarely have athletically strong players in the open field and are capable of dribbling, breaking man-marking systems and taking advantage of spaces. Within this context, Leao is an exception and an enigma for Italian defenses. Roma’s back line has no particularly fast players in recovery runs backward and, while playing high, had not yet found opponents capable of exploiting this weakness.
In fact, against Roma, Leao touched the ball 8 times in Roma's penalty box:
He was the player with the most touches there, while among Gasperini’s men, significantly, it was a defender like Ndicka who had the most touches. Even without completing dribbles, when he received the ball, he tilted the field toward Svilar’s goal in a way that was unmanageable for Roma.
In Serie A, how many players are capable of creating danger out of nothing in this way? Of taking advantage with such ease of the spaces conceded? Perhaps the only comparable to Leao in this sense is Marcus Thuram. After all, it is the most valuable profile type in the current transfer market, and they are players that Serie A simply cannot afford. They are also, however, the most conditioning players for tactical systems, those most capable of breaking balances patiently built through physicality and organization. Players over whom Italian coaches can exercise no control. A framework is also needed. This year, Leao is playing in more central zones and with fewer isolations on the flank, as we had already noticed in the match against Fiorentina.
For this reason, the Portuguese therefore gives the impression of needing less to be dangerous. While in past years, in those Sisyphean matches of isolations on the wing and static crosses, Leao was the interpreter of voluminous and inconclusive matches, this year he manages to be decisive while giving the impression of sometimes being less involved. Allegri, in short, seems to have very clear ideas on how he can get the best out of Leao: in a certain sense it is about not limiting his tendency toward spontaneity but exalting it. Excluding the first half hour, the match represented a kind of ideal of how Allegri imagines his Milan. A team that knows how to handle all tactical scores and knows how to use them depending on the moment of the match and the opponent’s characteristics. A direct team of transitions that attacks in an open field, yet also a team that knows how to become more aggressive if it senses the opponent’s difficulties. It plays with remarkable unity of intent, especially if we think of the last seasons as a scatterbrained team, and it is already quite mature in understanding the moments of matches. A cynical team, therefore, which nevertheless lacks something in finishing to be as effective as it would like. A team, however, that has two resources that few have: Pulisic against closed defenses and Leao against open ones.
